


You Can't Always Get What You Want

by zempasuchil



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 13:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Azula and Zuko, common ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Always Get What You Want

They write their names with the same character. Zuko does it better than Azula, of course; she's still so young she holds the brush in a fist, so when Zuko does it right and mother shows her again how to hold it she knocks the ink out of Ursa's hand, and bites Zuko hard on the arm and makes him cry.

 

Obviously she wants this more, Azula thinks, otherwise why wouldn't Zuko do better? Maybe he just doesn't care about firebending. Mother isn't a firebender. That's probably why.

Well, Father is a firebender. And Father always wins.

 

When Azula trips him for the fourth time, Zuko burns a hole right through her favorite dress and makes her cry. He feels so good about it he doesn't care when Uncle scolds him.

 

Later she learns, when she sees Zuko crying after Father spoke to him, that wanting is weak. When you want things there is the possibility that you won't get them. Azula finds that when she demands, with all her powers, the world falls into place around her.

 

No one has found the Avatar for a hundred years, and suddenly it's he, Zuko, that finds him first, meets him face to face, and follows him, finding him over and over. It's what he needs to do. It is his destiny.

 

When she saw him again in Ba Sing Se after all those years, she realized: he only wants more. The fool.

So she gives to him, brings him back just like he wants, even tells Father the lie about the Avatar, and the feeling of the power she has - well. She clearly should have been firstborn.

 

Even after he returns to the capital, he dreams about running from that Earth Kingdom village. Where he had a family, almost; where he was everything good and they still turned him away.

But why?

Why does he still care?

 

"You can't treat me like this! You can't treat me like Zuko!"

The look in his eye makes her afraid and she suddenly realizes, she sounds like him.

She quashes the feeling of want and hardens her resolve.

 

Azula's come ungrounded; Zuko knows her well enough to see this. He is like her enough to recognize her weakness and take the chance to strike.


End file.
